From CORNELL UNIVERSITY and the “we have compassion and fairness and you don’t” department comes this eye-roller. One wonders how they might rate the compassion and fairness of this statement:

“We are not morally bad people for taking carbon and turning it into the energy that offers life to humanity…” Carbon-based energy, which is “the most affordable and reliable source of energy in demand today, liberates people from poverty,” “Without energy, life is brutal and short.” – Dr. John Christy Source

Moral values influence level of climate change action

ITHACA, N.Y. – Two moral values highly rated by liberals — compassion and fairness — influence willingness to make personal choices to mitigate climate change’s impact in the future, according to a new multidisciplinary study by Cornell University researchers.

The findings also suggest that a moral value rated more highly by conservatives – purity – also appears to have a positive effect, though not as pronounced as compassion and fairness.

Those insights from a group of four researchers at Cornell – Janis Dickinson, professor of natural resources; Poppy McLeod, professor of communication; Robert Bloomfield, professor of management and professor of accounting; and Shorna Allred, professor of natural resources – were published in PLOS ONE. While prior research has investigated the relationship between moral values and environmental attitudes, this work extends this investigation to intentionality with respect to changes in environmental behavior.

The authors’ work is based on Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations theory. A professor at New York University, Haidt identifies five “moral axes” around which humans develop individual moral reasoning: compassion/harming, fairness/cheating, in-group loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion and purity/degradation.

Previous research using Haidt’s moral foundations has found that those who identify as liberal prize the values of compassion and fairness most highly. Those who consider themselves conservative place nearly as high a value on compassion and fairness, but place a substantially higher value on in-group loyalty, authority and purity.

The Cornell researchers also found that belief in climate change was significantly associated with increased willingness to act, while those who identified as politically conservative, and who were older and male, were less inclined to act.

Given that liberal attitudes tend to favor action on climate change, Dickinson was not surprised that compassion and fairness correlated strongly with individual willingness to make lifestyle changes.

“Compassion and fairness make perfect sense, because climate change is an environmental justice issue, and being willing to do something about climate change also requires that we care about future generations. Both of those things require compassion and a sense of fairness,” said Dickinson, the study’s lead author. “But it’s not as clear why purity would be important. It may be because within the religious community, leaders have been focusing on the ideas that we are stewards of the earth and that there’s something impure about destroying natural systems.”

The association between the valuation of purity and a willingness to make personal lifestyle changes, while not as strong as for compassion and fairness, indicates the potential for alternative pathways to climate change action for liberals and conservatives.

“Our finding that willingness to take action on climate change was related to moral values embraced by both liberals and conservatives suggests that it is too simplistic to use political ideology alone to predict support for climate change action,” said McLeod.

“As we learn what’s important to different kinds of people with respect to climate change, that information can help us communicate in ways where the problem can be heard,” said Dickinson. “And I think we may be missing arguments that are important to people if we ignore moral diversity.”

You have to remember – what’s important here is the ‘warm fuzzy’. It’s sort of like a narcotic buzz these types get from their moral exhibitionism – and there is absolutely no necessity for value to their actions – or even that the cause is just. But the ‘fix’ requires ever more intense actions – just like the same dose of crack doesn’t get you as high this week as last, THIS week, you need MORE than last week.

And really, this is the same ‘Holier than Thou’ crowd that were the judgmental, puritan ‘church lady’ types that felt so superior to the rest of us before they were painted over with day-glow green.

A historical note: In 1935, two years after the Nazionalsozialists rose to power, the German government passed a Reich law for the protection of the natural environment, a law whose scope was unprecedented at the time and whose goal was to protect and care for the homeland’s natural environment. The law included regulations for the protection of flora and fauna, as well as for the conservation of unique natural phenomena of scientific importance and of aesthetic and cultural value. These natural phenomena included Germany’s celebrated forests, which were considered a central component of the German national identity.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/features/brown-and-green-were-the-nazis-forerunners-of-environmental-movements-1.513354

Yep. Ol’ Adolf was a big Greenie. Environmentalism is historically one of the most exploitable ways to get the population to forsake their rights and prosperity, ‘for the greater good’, because ‘what harm can it do?’ – ‘it’s for the environment’.

There’s no other cause I’ve seen that is so effective in getting people flocking to put the noose around their own necks.

I would use a different term. What these people are really doing is indulging in spiritual masturbation. On the one hand they feel guilty (never mind what they feel guilty about, they just get a thrill from feeling guilty). This leads up to the climactic moment at which they decide to do something about it, which usually involves spending a lot of their money and even more of other peoples’ money. Having done this, they then have a warm post-coital glow of achievement.

“I would use a different term. What these people are really doing is indulging in spiritual masturbation. On the one hand they feel guilty (never mind what they feel guilty about, …”
—————————————-
“I would use a different term. What these people are really doing is indulging in spiritual masturbation. On the one hand they feel guilty (never mind what they do with their other hand …”

I don’t completely agree……self-indulgence and elitism I do 100% agree…but for a different reason

compassion and fairness is a judgement call…someone has to choose who is the winner of that compassion and fairness..and who is the loser…they get to choose who’s right and wrong…right out of the liberal play book…and perfect example of self-indulgence and elitism

purity..is the polar opposite of that….inward looking…and a judgement on self…not a projection

The way I started out considering the pros and cons of CAGW, I said to myself, “If their case is so strong, then why do they have to lie?” Once you lie to me, then every other of your moral issues fall by the wayside. If you lie to me, then I even may work against you.

Mann, Briffa, Steig, East Anglia, Hansen & Schmidt at GISS, and others – why would I support the opinions of a bunch of liars?

John, exactly!! It’s convenient, in fact essential, for the ‘students’ to take industrial man’s influence over climate as a given. This is not unlike studying how conservatives and liberals might feel about the damage caused by gravity.

compassion and fairness
====================
what about truth and honesty? are these not moral values?

are compassion and fairness moral? for example, someone does poorly on an exam because they didn’t pay attention in class and didn’t bother to do their homework.

should we take compassion on that person and in the interest of fairness artificially increase their exam marks to match the rest of the class?

after all they must have a good reason why they didn’t pay attention or do their homework, maybe they were breast fed too long/short as a child, or potty training was to authoritarian/lax, so it wouldn’t be fair to give them a poor mark.

I also noticed that and wondered about it. It’s often what is left out that is most important. And I notice that you learn more about the predetermined biases of the report authors, than about the people they studied.

The problem with the “warm and fuzzy” is that they are not willing to make a change in THEIR lifestyles, only in others. If they did want to make a difference, they wouldn’t jet off to the next COPxx, they would teleconference it. They would give up their million dollar yachts, private planes, and mansions, and lower their standard of living to that of the abysmally poor in Africa. If they were to do that, I would have a far greater respect for them and their position.

Of course, I would also, like them, view the facts and data and realize that it is still an elaborate con, thus not make changes in my own lifestyle which is far closer to the abysmally poor in Africa then to the one enjoyed by those having the “warm and fuzzy.”

What pile of BS. I have had it up to here with the Liberal/Progressives lie that only THEY are caring and compassionate. I would say we all are but that conservatives go about trying to do something about it in a pragmatic and more realistic way. On the other hand liberals believe that you just have to tap the magic money trees and faery dust to provide for the poor.

‘Caring compassion’ from the left is just the bait in the bait and switch progressive use to coerce a belief in their agenda. It’s the same with climate science, where the the bait they use to make the sacrifice seem necessary is the illusion of saving the planet from destruction by man coupled with a false sense of urgency. The switch is a one world government where freedom has been displaced with conformance to narratives beneficial to an even further detached and elite ruling class.

‘Caring compassion’ from the left is just the bait in the bait and switch progressive use to coerce a belief in their agenda.

That same technique is used across many cultures world wide as a tool of oppression. I’m not sure what a good term for it but ‘fascism’ comes close. The technique makes use of the in-group-out-group human tendency towards tribalism. It is notorious in American middle schools, especially by girls (at least in our popular culture it’s seen this way)

I’ve had this same discussion with Pakistani professor about the Islamists inserting themselves into universities in the 70s and 80s, from eastern European college students during and after the post WW2 occupation by the Soviet Union, read similar stories about Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and the Soviet Union, culminating in the modern Western University.

The psychological trick is slimy and abusive and needs to be fought no matter what culture it appears in and which side is using it.

I seem to remember that someone did a study of conservative and liberal charity donations several years ago that reinforced you statement. The liberals as you say would vote for spending other peoples (tax) money while the conservatives gave more to charity. Here is an article that mentions several similar studies (with conflicting results): http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2014/10/17/Who-s-More-Generous-Liberals-or-Conservatives.

An example of the now very common fallacy – begging the question. I don’t think climate change is a big deal for future generations, so I don’t support taking action now. Its not that I don’t care, its that you haven’t convinced me about your basic assumption.

Trump, Brexit, climate change, inequality- lots of claims being made that just beg the question.

morality is the science of choice in the face of alternatives based on a standard of value.
obedience is the self immolation of a conscious entity
force and mind are opposites
commandments demand submission.
this was celebrated at jonestown and produced the meme ‘koolaid’.

†This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1002/2016JA023190

Abstract

Evidence strongly indicates that the strength of the Sun’s polar fields near the time of a sunspot cycle minimum determines the strength of the following solar activity cycle. We use our Advective Flux Transport (AFT) code, with flows well constrained by observations, to simulate the evolution of the Sun’s polar magnetic fields from early 2016 to the end of 2019 — near the expected time of Cycle 24/25 minimum. We run a series of simulations in which the uncertain conditions (convective motion details, active region tilt, and meridional flow profile) are varied within expected ranges. We find that the average strength of the polar fields near the end of Cycle 24 will be similar to that measured near the end of Cycle 23, indicating that Cycle 25 will be similar in strength to the current cycle. In all cases the polar fields are asymmetric with fields in the south stronger than those in the north. This asymmetry would be more pronounced if not for the predicted weakening of the southern polar fields in late 2016 and through 2017. After just four years of simulation the variability across our ensemble indicates an accumulated uncertainty of about 15%. This accumulated uncertainty arises from stochastic variations in the convective motion details, the active region tilt, and changes in the meridional flow profile. These variations limit the ultimate predictability of the solar cycle.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016JA023190/full

Yesterday on the radio I heard an extended interview with someone extolling the virtues of a vegan diet as a way to reduce carbon emissions. Towards the end the guest said that if the whole family embraces a vegan diet that is equivalent to taking a car off the road.

It was clear the guest’s real agenda was to discourage people from eating meat. Otherwise he could have pointed out how easy it is to telecommute now. Seven or eight years ago I was driving to the airport sometime three days a week and flying to see clients. This year—with more clients—I’ve not flown once and I’ve put barely 2,000 miles on my car.

Sigh… I wish I could. Regulatory requirements require a licensed, competent, qualified person to do the job I do. It pays the bills but, one of these days I’m going to stop traveling. And, when I do stop traveling, it’s probably going to be darn difficult, nigh on impossible, to get me on another commercial airline.

How can you believe anything they say? They make up their numbers all the time on renewable energy, especially costs. They think their sense of moral superiority gives them the right to lie to everyone. It seems very improbable that a family, giving up meat, will save that much energy. I have no axe to grind here. I’m practically a vegetarian myself. If this is based on projections from herbivore methane emissions, then we can give herbivores inexpensive feed supplements to reduce methane emissions by almost 99%. I bet the vegan did not mention that.

I use GOTO meetings for almost daily meetings with my clients. They have a video feature but no one really wants to use it so we just talk, I keep notes on the screen which they can comment on as we go, and everyone gets minutes immediately after the meeting. Also works great for editing documents together.

Roger , Thanks for the info . You’ll see on my http://CoSy.com that my product is a computer linguistic environment which deals with the mundane but imperative tasks of a day-timer but built from the chip up in open language in which you command and customize the environment which at the same time is capable of the APL level succinct expression of computation which got me involved in this battle to return this climate nonscience to a quantitative classical physical foundation . It can use a lot of instructional interaction even the building of a user/programmer community . So screen sharing is more important that faces . Certainly for demoing and teaching language , it’s an incredible new tool .
Thanks

To a leftist fairness is defined as nobody having more than the leftist. No matter how hard they may have worked for it. Since the leftist has, in his opinion, worked, the leftist is therefore entitled to just as much as everyone else has.

Jer0me November 16, 2016 at 2:17 pm makes a very good point. Progressives tend to protest more, and thrie protest same to attract opportunistic criminals. There is also some evidence that many of the “activists” are only active if they are well payed.
Note there is some joking in my house hold about answering the ad and getting paid for a night on the town.
Do note this is happening in places like Portand OR. Who won Portland? Most of those arrested in Portland it turns out were not registered to vote anywhere in Oregon. Go figure.

sorry did not see your link
But L agree this is orchestrated. I think once you dig a bit you will find different groups with different agendas.

I think there are some real protesters who are afraid of Mr Trump, the other side did so much demonizing it should be expected.
Then there are the for hire crowd that may be under instruction to provoke the police so real protesters get hurt.
Nothing like a actual real non-law breaking protester getting clubbed by the police in the the confusion.
Then of course the thugs and thieves who know at a Liberal Progressive protest no one will stand up to them out of fear.
michael

The key board came with two nice gaming computers I got for #1 son and me
other than the keyboard letters disappearing as I type, they are great computers. I have extra keyboards in the garage need to dig one out.

“Mike, new keyboards are cheap. They have also been improving over time.”

Don’t you believe it. I have a couple of old IBM keyboards and you could drive a truck over them. The sort that still plug into the little round “keyboard” socket on the back of the desktop PC. Good, clean feel and designed to last a life time. Paid a dollar or two at the flea market.

They make adapters for the round plug (straight serial) to USB. May cost as much as a new keyboard though.
As to the improving over time comment, I was trying to make a small joke based on our conversation on another thread.

What am I looking at here?
They all have black hooded sweatshirts or black hooded raincoats. They all have black pants and black sneakers. They all have the same sticks, looks like 1 inch X 3 ft. dowels. They all have black lightweight backpacks.
A coordinated assault?
An organized criminal activity?
I wonder if anybody would be interested in finding out who would be behind such a thing.

Five looters lined up at the American Apparel store.
At the upper right of the photo, there is a large “A” in a circle drawn on the window.
Perhaps a mark by an “activity coordinator” to hit this store and not another?
I wonder why American Apparel would be singled out? I wonder what the answer to this question would reveal?

In today’s society I would think that it would be difficult to establish a common moral framework that works for both liberals and conservatives. So attempts at science without commonly accepted definition of the key terms is nonsense.

Amoral progressives are very quick to claim that they are morally superior… to everyone. And in service to nobody other than themselves. Well, I have a bone to pick with the elite progressives on that.

The LEFTS “compassion and fairness” is a false compassion and is only fair when compared to themselves. For example if 1 person has $1 Million and a lefty loser has $1 then it is fair to redistribute otherwise they don’t care. False compassion is a seeming type of compassion which is used to push an agenda. Then there’s the kind of false compassion that leads you to give ‘help’ that doesn’t help but only makes you feel better. When you indulge your compassionate feelings at the expense of someone else, that’s false compassion, too.

Quote from the article: “. . . climate change is an environmental justice issue.” No. It is a scientific issue, in the original sense (i.e., verifiable, repeatable where experiments are possible, dependent upon reliable and stable data). Trying to cast this as a justice issue (=fairness, likely compassion) takes it out of the verifiable realm and into the touchy-feely realm; a totally false viewpoint. If the alarmists want to be credible, they must return to verifiable science, from which they departed a generation or more ago.

Intrinsically there is nothing wrong with compassion and fairness. The issue is that in regards climate change, the compassionate crowd has allowed themselves and their passions to become misappropriated.

Do we embrace Progressive’s ultimate compassion, that is compassionate euthanasia, because it is compassionate even if it is it forced on the elderly, say after age 80, as typified by the movie Soylent Green?

Do we embrace equal opportunity as fair, or should we embrace liberal equality of outcomes, and forced seizure of private wealth to benefit all those without? We know that system as socialism come communism.

BBC journalists have been going nuts over the fact that those in the Global Warming Industry, mostly overpaid bureaucrats with little real purpose in life, could be about to be thrown out onto the street.

They are quite rightly scared, as they may well be next. The Trump presidential victory scares far more pointless bureaucrats than it does illegal immigrants.

As for Obama’s much publicised legacy, it now looks like it is about to be on par with that of Jimmy Carter.

I don’t agree with Jimmy Carter’s politics, but he is one of my heroes for what he has done since leaving office “…A major accomplishment of The Carter Center has been the elimination of more than 99 percent of cases of Guinea worm disease, from an estimated 3.5 million cases in 1986 to 148 reported cases in 2013 to 23 in 2015…” [Wikipedia]

Thanks to the professors for telling us what we already know. People generally try to make decisions that square with their sense of morality. It takes years of intense immersion in academia to spin such cotton candy into a meal. You hit McDonald’s on the way home.

That climate BS offends our morals is not news to us. It’s why we continue to fight when the most powerful people in the world tell us the debate is over. It’s why we defend science from the pollution of politics. We are idealists. And we just got our hands on the controls of the green gravy train. Clear the track.

All these guys and gals or people who claim and believe that humanity is a “plague”, do not in principle “deserve” to be part of it at all, but never the less there where we are, with the most strangeness of nature, and reality, we all are part of it, for better or worse……..is the way it always being, and the way it always going a be…:) The only way to weight and measure up our worth, I think.:)

Haidt’s list does not include the Greatest Moral Value of them all – a Passionate Regard for the Sanctity of Human Life beginning at Conception. Why is that? Without a Passionate Regard for the Sanctity of Human Life beginning at Conception, a person has no Morality.

A Passionate Regard for the Sanctity of Human Life beginning at Conception is the Core Belief of a truly Moral Human Being. Just as the Love of Money is the Root of all Evil, Love for the Right to Life is the Foundation of all Righteousness. No one can say that they are Moral or Righteous without first possessing a Passionate Regard for the Sanctity of Human Life beginning at Conception; it is impossible.

What utter nonsense. If you want to see naked authoritarianism in action, look at all the calls by liberals to punish or execute climate “deniers”, repudiate Brexit or the election of Trump, praise the Communist Chinese, and even lots of calls to assassinate Trump, to deny people the president they elected.

Correction: it influences their willingness to say they will make those personal choices. Following through is another thing. Reference Al Gore, John Kerry, and really almost every liberal who thinks driving a prius means they get to fly 100k miles a year with a clear conscience. But saying you are willing to do something is all that is needed to acquire the desired level of smugness anyway.

“Two moral values highly rated by liberals ” This is odd, but true. They claim to value them, but will endlessly warp them to further their ends – they call it moral relativism. Of course, when it comes to climate they turn into fire and brimstone preachers

People lie. They will say all kinds of crap to make themselves seem more worthy. It’s called virtue signalling. Why did the polls get it so wrong about the election? People lied because they didn’t want the poll taker to think poorly of them.

Liberals only think they’re compassionate and fair.

Liberals tend to believe they’re brilliant, compassionate, moral, enlightened, perceptive, and courageous, not because of anything they’ve actually done, but just because they’re liberal. When you completely divorce a person’s self image from his behavior, it produces terrible results — like liberals who hurl abuse at conservative women while believing that they’re feminists or selfish left-wingers who’ve never given a dime to charity, but believe themselves to be much more compassionate than people who tithe 10% of their income. link

The Cornell researchers also found that belief in climate change was significantly associated with increased willingness to act, while those who identified as politically conservative, and who were older and male, were less inclined to act.

Hmmm….”Act”? What does that mean? Protest? Riot? Throw public temper tantrums if they don’t get their way?
For me, I believe you are free to be an idiot if you want. Just don’t try to force me to “act” like an idiot also.

Yep, in Putin’s case anyway, it involves rigging the system by eliminating opposition and swapping between President and Prime Minister every few years to make sure you can stay in power indefinitely.
Oh, and by rigging elections and making noises such that anyone who criticises you is anti-Russian, not just anti-Putin, always gets the *voting* on your side eh?
Let’s hope that “admiration” never extends to Trump.
Christ would we be in trouble.

When is Mankind going to reward the preservation of life on Earth by avoiding the death of the Plant Kingdom due to CO2 atmospheric depletion. By far that is the most important ecology action ever undertaken, and is still not returned to levels that plants evolved in around 1000-1200 ppm. Liberating CO2 is a positive contribution!

“We are not morally bad people for taking carbon and turning it into the energy that offers life to humanity”

Indeed not
However *you* are short-sighted.
Fossil has had it’s day.
Thatcher saw that 30 years ago in the UK.
Thousands suffered because of her, with comunities decimated.
Those same communities suffer still with social dependency, drugs and crime.
Nothing really replaced the mines as jobs for the unskilled.
Lost out to “Globalism” – same as the US voted against last week.

New tech is coming, resist if you like but it’s got to the point now that gainsaying AGW is not only scientifically and logically daft, but also financially daft as well (as a long-term strategy).
The World has moved on and will continue that course with or with the US (for a while at least with Trump at the helm).
The US will eventually have to “cotton-on”, but by then the Chinese will have cornered the market.
Your loss.
BUT: Trump is a business-man. We shall see if that impulse overcomes the ideological rejection of AGW science (if he has – does anyone know beyond “It’s a hoax by the chinese”.. ..”I may have said that”?)
The likes of Elon Musk should be given support, especially if Trump wants to renew infrastructure. Musk plans to build the “Hyperloop” after all.
New infrastructure needs money, and if Trump plans to cut taxes …. well something/one has to pay for it.

“Fossil has had it’s day.” Nothing could be further from the truth. New sources such as the discovery of vast quantities of shale oil and gas in Texas are continually being discovered. Vast sources of coal are still waiting to be mined. Wind and solar are laughable as sources of energy – hideously expensive and unreliable, swallowing huge tracts of land, just to name a few of their serious drawbacks. They only make sense to those like yourself who have swallowed the CAGW ideology whole.

Musks hyperloop should be built with private capital. Full stop. It is becoming increasingly evident that Elon Musk is a “super salesman” in the sense that he keeps the customers focused on a possible future rather than the disappointing present. He is a living Viagra commercial.

I recently caught sight of musician Jack Whites Tesla outside a Nashville venue with two expensive large fellows guarding it. A perfect visual of what is wrong with the subsidy sucking Tesla motor car company. Of course it would be impolite to mention his failed solar enterprise.

There are a lot of things wrong, confusing, and nonsensical in your post, but I will point out just one: tax cuts don’t have to be “paid for”. Tax cuts allow people who earned the money to keep it. Sure spending has to be cut (depending on where we are on the Laffer curve), but I disagree with the subtle liberal slant on tax cuts needing to be “paid for”. In actuality it is the big gov’t spending that needs to be paid for.

Unable to win the legal, rational, or scientific arguments leaves them with the last option….. the moral high ground. Supported and aided by a willing biased MSM their voice is heard. The attacks have only begun and I believe will do them more damage than good. Anarchists of any stripe are not appreciated.

In the absence of belief in God, or some other abstract external moral arbiter, no moral judgement in absolute terms is possible.

This is why Marxism appeals to the selfishness of the individual, and disguises it as concern for society.

Left people – what you call Liberals – are inherently selfish and antisocial, which is why they project it onto ‘capitalists’ and other organisations that actually do benefit society in the whole..

This massive selfishness is what leads to the need to crate moral compasses and spend their whole lives virtue-signalling – it’s simply their way of expiating the guilt they feel for being such selfish amoral Cnuts…

In fact the whole Liberal movement is based on generating guilt and selling products and politics on the back of it.

“In the absence of belief in God, or some other abstract external moral arbiter, no moral judgement in absolute terms is possible.”

heh- so your divine revelation puts you on the throne of judgement, eh?
i bet your inability to define the word ‘morality’ helps you work that sleight of mind.
what else do you talk about on that direct line to supernatural invisibles?

I notice you do not offer any rational or philosophical rebuttal to Leo Smith’s point. Instead you attempt what you presume is witty sarcasm. By doing so, you demonstrate a lack of morality, as an honest person will admit it when they have no reasonable reply.

stevan
i’m the only one here who defined the word and proved he knows what it means.
perhaps you had your head in an awkward position and missed it.
you don’t get a trophy for participating, you special flake, you.
go tweet a selfie or something

john, you have no idea how much you reveal about yourself when your thoughts about morality are how to justify child molestation and when you use the word ‘kid’ as a deprecatory term.
these are red flags that call for an intervention. i only hope these thoughts that fill your mind have not led to overt acts.
unless your special fetish is blind, retarded kids, you will be caught.

PS ~ What you don’t seem to have, is any explanation for why raping children is not moral, according to your “definition” of morality. It really seems to me that you base your judgments about what is moral on something(s) else, but are not self aware enough to realize that.

Belief in God justifies the most horrific crimes against humanity, as we see today with ISIS:

Hosea 13:16

“The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.”

Atheists have also committed similar atrocities. Neither theism nor atheism are the bases of morality, but the choices made by individuals based upon their own inherent codes of conduct.

But the truly righteous can chose to disobey the barbaric commandments of God. Witness the case of the Amalekites, whom Saul spared, against the express orders of the Most High:

1 Samuel 15:1 Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD.

1 Samuel 15:2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.

1 Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

1 Samuel 15:4 And Saul gathered the people together, and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of Judah.

1 Samuel 15:5 And Saul came to a city of Amalek, and laid wait in the valley.

1 Samuel 15:6 And Saul said unto the Kenites, Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them: for ye showed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.

1 Samuel 15:7 And Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah until thou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt.

1 Samuel 15:8 And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.

1 Samuel 15:9 But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.

“The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.” ”

That is not God telling anyone to do that, it’s Him saying (in essence) that He will not protect the people of Samaria from those who will do it . . . There were (according to that Book you quote), some truly viscous people around those parts, which is why He sent “the sword of Israel” there to “surgically” remove them, rather than destroy the whole world like He did with the great flood.

If you omit the justification He gives for removing certain “tribes”, which is that they were descendants of what are called “fallen angels”, and therefore were not actually just human in the biological/genetic sense, it can seem like an “atrocity”. But in actuality (according to the Book) it was to spare mankind from being savaged by what we now might call a psychopathic “invasive species” that would eventually take over the planet again . . Which is to say prevent a great many atrocities . .

i am aware of your obsession with child rape, for damn sure. conjuring up these images gets you wet, does it?
there’s no way in hell i’m going to help you justify your perversion on moral grounds
that’s because i have a standard of values that is consistent with human nature – something you clearly do not.
maybe your buddies can help you at the next nambla meeting.

No one needs the Good Behavior Seal of Approval of a supernatural entity to define morality.

In the pagan Plato’s dialogue “Euthyphro,” the eponymous character tries to explain his conception of piety to Socrates: “the pious acts,” Euthyphro says, are those which are loved by the gods.” But Socrates finds this definition ambiguous, and asks Euthyphro: “are the pious acts pious because they are loved by the gods, or are the pious acts loved by the gods because they are pious?”

Non-religious bases for morality are infinitely more sound than basing moral precepts upon a hypothetical supreme or at least superior being. Moral behavior can be derived from philosophical first principles rather than from the dictates of a stern, righteous punishing daddy in the sky. Or wherever.

I note that the behavior throughout history of atheists is no worse than that of alleged Christians, so obviously belief in an imaginary supernatural character grading people’s performance on earth, while counting head hairs and falling sparrows, doesn’t improve morality.

In the 20th century mass murdering atheists Stalin and Mao and pagan Hitler began to catch up with Christians’ centuries of genocide, but Christian atrocities continued, as for example in the Congo under its owner, the Catholic King of Belgium, and in the Croatian extermination camps.

Nothing to chose from between the behavior of believers and unbelievers. In everyday life, atheists behave better than do Christians. Nations with similar cultures but higher rates of atheism are more peaceful than more Christian states, let alone Muslim. The atheist violent crime rate is a lot lower than Christians in every country for which there are data.

Which is not surprising, since atheists and agnostics are smarter, richer, more productive and useful to society than the credulous, often criminal faithful.

It is fascinating to me to see atheists struggling to justify treating themselves as superior to a Creator God . . an Entity that (hypothetically) MADE our consciousnesses (and everything else), somehow not being as knowledgeable/intelligent as they . . I don’t know how this level of rationalizing is even possible . .

“No one needs the Good Behavior Seal of Approval of a supernatural entity to define morality.”

Says what worm? Such an Entity is OBVIOUSLY out of our league entirely, if real. I didn’t believe for most of life that such an Entity was real, but at no point did the idea that if real, I might be His moral (or any other form of) superior . . There seems to be an inability in some to think within the hypothetical of His existence AT ALL . . and they just keep treating what they can imagine as if a realistic approximation of what such an Entity could actually be like. It’s so childish, to me . .

The problem is that there is no evidence whatsoever supporting the existence of an entity which judges the moral behavior of people. It’s possible scientifically to be agnostic as to some kind of creator of the universe, but there is no rational basis for imaging a fairy sky judge.

Besides which, the behavior of the mythical biblical God of Abraham is appalling, by any possible moral standard. He is so vile that even those who worshiped Him refused to obey his genocidal commandments. The repulsive Sicko Perv happily admits to creating evil. Not to mention that still today, any omnipotent, omniscient being that might exist must obviously be unspeakably deceitful, deceptive and sadistically cruel.

Religious faith may be of some use to society, but for me, no thanks to such a celestial stinker.

“Our finding that willingness to take action on climate change was related to moral values embraced by both liberals and conservatives suggests that it is too simplistic to use political ideology alone to predict support for climate change action,” said McLeod.”

Climate justice. The mary robinson founditionhttp://www.mrfcj.org/principles-of-climate-justice/
She used the Irish presidency as a stepping stone to her higher agenda of spreading the wealth of the world evenly amongst the all the people.
But, guess what she’s seeking a €2,000,000 tax credit for the donation of her memoirs to the state.
All previous presidents gave them for free.

“Compassion and fairness make perfect sense, because climate change is an environmental justice issue, and being willing to do something about climate change also requires that we care about future generations.”

They don’t seem to care that future generations will have to pay triple the cost for electricity and saddle them with more debt all to reduce the global temperature by .2 Deg C as if that matters one bit in the grand scheme of things.

I wonder how moral it is to enslave future generations of minorities as well as all Americans currently hovering around the poverty line. It reminds me when the Black Chamber of Commerce’s commission a study of the EPA carbon regulation and it impacts to minorities. The alarmist and the liberal elite have attempted to falsify the findings with a lot of misinformation and mud slinging. Its no wonder that minorities are slowly realizing what liberalism currently stand for. Attached is the article, within the attachment, you can hear Alford’s opening statements to the US senate sub committee. And yes, it’s the same Alford who was against the Kyoto Protocol, so Desmog probably has a dossier on him.

I wonder how moral it is to enslave future generations of minorities as well as all Americans currently hovering around the poverty line. It reminds me when the Black Chamber of Commerce’s commission a study of the EPA carbon regulation and it impacts to minorities. The alarmist and the liberal elite have attempted to falsify the findings with a lot of misinformation and mud slinging. Its no wonder that minorities are slowly realizing what liberalism currently stand for. Attached is the article, within the attachment, you can hear Alford’s opening statements to the US senate sub committee. And yes, it’s the same Alford who was against the Kyoto Protocol, so Desmog probably has a dossier on him.

the fairness and morality argument would hold if i could be convinced that they are right about climate change but still refused to take climate action. it does not apply to the debate on how fossil fuel emissions affect climate.

First, relative moralism is in stark contrast to absolute moralism. Absolute moralism is embodied in the 10 Commandments from the Old Testament. The 10 Commandments offer a common absolute moral framework in Judeaism and Christianity, the key examples being: thou shalt not kill, and thou shalt not bear false witness (lie about your neighbor). In the New Testament, we see the ultimate example of absolute morals as Jesus accepted crucifixtion for himself at the hands of the Roman soldiers rather than allow others to suffer his fate.

The Progressive orthodoxy has relative moralism as its core tenant. It is essentially “the ends justifies the means.” Moral values only are judged against other moral values for their virtue. A seniority ranking then emerges between morals.

An example is that “it is okay to keep Africa and the millions of people there in energy poverty if it means helping to save the planet.” The premature deaths of African babies, the wide-spread poverty, and the disease are rationalized as necessary in the War on Climate Change.

When you hear of Progressives (usually calling themselves Atheists) wanting governments to get rid of public displays of the 10 Commandments, the real intent is to breakdown society’s absolute moralism and thereby further the societal acceptance of relative moralism.

Islam embraces relative morals. In Islamic societies murder is not justified or condoned,… unless it is an infidel who blasphemed their prophet, or if a cleric had issed a Fatwa against the murdered, then murder is okay. That’s Relative moralism in action.

In the Climate Change religion, relative moralism is on full display. Thus it is okay to fudge climate data to keep the faithful unquestioning of the church orthodoxy with “hottest year evah! claims. It becomes okay and necessary to destroy the lives of coal miners and their communities in order to “fight climate change.”

And the list of relative moralism atrocities continue, with the real end goal that wealth and political power are slowly accumulated in the hands of the Progressive elite ruling class.

no, I don’t tell others how to live their lives. I do not advocate the seizure of personal property to further equality in outcomes. Equal opportunity is all that the state should impose. Different Outcomes are thus inevitable in a society, with the result be an unequal distribution of wealth.

it is your right to confuse yourself.
it is your right to abuse language by debasing it to semiotics.
it is your right to submit and obey and exhort others to do the same.
there is no 11th commandment ordering that ‘thou shalt think for thyself’
it seems you wouldn’t understand the irony if there were… lol

oh, i’m so triggered…lol
joel, you are the moral relativist because you have no standard of values.
that makes your entire jeremiad a shining example of progressive hypocrisy.
of course, if you did have a standard of values you could define it in a single sentence.
then you could properly lay claim to some glimmer of understanding of the nature of morality.
that was lobbed easy over the net, preacher. ball’s in your court.
morality is the science of choice in the face of alternatives based on a standard of value.*

*that’s the answer in the back of the book- so you have no excuse now.

I know immorality when I see it, just as one does not need to be an MD to see someone is sick and in need to medical care.

I know honesty matters above all else.

The dishonesty of the Progressives is the result of a relative moralism that allows them to establish “climate justice” virtues over social justice. And SJ over economic justice. And thus econic justice over honesty and integrity.

Hence we have fiddled and fudged climate data, circular climate models, as a means justified by a desired end. And that is immoral when it also is used to prevent the economic development of developing countries using affordable carbon-based energy.

you know what you can’t conceive when you feel it, because metaphorz! therefore you preach like the iconic liberal.
and your winning argument in any debate is to divert, insult and run away.
more iconic liberal. the species could be described using joel as the holotype.
it’s displacement behavior and cognitive dissonance on display in all its exopthalmic, hyperventilating impotence.

You are very much the Monty Python Black Knight, and all wanting to pass a moral checkpoint must get by you. Now having lost both arms and legs, you continue to blather on about your superiority (with obtuse words to feign righteousness).

This paper appears to be one of the many that won’t be replicable. Just a few gripes with the basic premise:
“The authors’ work is based on Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations theory. A professor at New York University, Haidt identifies five “moral axes” around which humans develop individual moral reasoning: compassion/harming, fairness/cheating, in-group loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion and purity/degradation.”

Apparently Mr. Haidt makes things up, or had a useless research plan to begin with. I very much doubt that he came up with these by testing how effective the several hundred possible antonyms or opposites there are. His moral axes are skewed. Compassion/harming? When I show compassion for someone I try to help. The opposite would be indifference. Fairness/cheating. Interesting skew, I think most people would say fairness/unfair- as in not paying equal pay for equal work. In-group loyalty/betrayal another case of polar opposites that are 75degrees or so off. There are many opposites for loyalty depending on the situation. A common on-line thesaurus doesn’t even include subversion. Purity/degradation- again there are a lot of possible opposites- impurity comes to mind, foul, dirty, depraved, evil, licentious, etc.

Like almost all ‘science’ related to human behavior and thinking getting a clear cut result without bias or confusion is extremely difficult. Coming up with useful terms that mean the same thing to both the investigators and the subject is highly subject to bias on both sides of the experiment. Using Trump terror to caption a picture of paid demonstrators vandalizing and looting is one example.

The above is couched in terms of “life style changes” which is a fuzzy way of saying sacrifice. But without some kind of group loyalty a significant sacrifice is not possible. But the free market is continually forcing us to make life style changes which have the same effect as sacrifices. For instance if technology had stopped changing in 1900 Americans would emit 3 times more CO2 than they do today. (Johan Norberg, Progress, 2016 p 123) It seems every effort to frame this as a moral issue side-steps the data that show that progress is the best substitute for sacrifice ever invented. The invisible hand of environmental improvement.

Ok, let us play their game. The climate sensivity of a gas is temperature gain that would result if the amount of that gas in the Earth’s atmosphere were doubled. According to their reports, the IPCC does not really know what the climate sensivity of CO2 really is but a mean value of their range of guesses might be around 3 degrees C. But CO2 is not the most climate sensitive gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. That would be N2 which also holds more heat energy than the rest of the Earth’s atmosphere combined. N2 is also not a good LWIR radiator like the greenhouse gases are so it holds heat energy a lot longer yet it gains it quite readily via conduction and convection.. The climate sensivity of N2 is at least 25 degrees C. Getting rid of all N2 in the atmosphere will definately cool the planet down. So instead of campaigning to get rid of all CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere it would be much more effective, in turms of curbing global warming, to get rid of all the N2 in the Earth’s atmosphere instead.

That is the point, the average pressure will change. When one burns fossil fuel, O2 is taken from the atmosphere to form mostly H2O and CO2. Most of the H2O is returned to the surface as some form of precipitation so there is little change in the mass of the atmosphere but trying to double or half the amount of N2 is another matter. Doubling or halving the amount of N2 in our atmosphere would cause a huge chahge in surface pressure and with it a very significant change in surface temperature. The 33 degrees C that the Earth is warmer because of the atmosphgere is all a function of the heat capacity of the atmosphere and the pressure gradient caused by gravity. There is no additional warming caused by the LWIR absorption properties of so called greenhouse gases. The burning of fossil fuels would cause a significant change in the average surface temperature of the Earth if it resulted in a significant change in surface pressure but it does not.

Not to bore you to tears but Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek has a great pertinent quote about economic planning of which climate change policy is a part.

… is from page 95 of the 2016 Mercatus Center re-issue of my late colleague Don Lavoie’s superb 1985 volume National Economic Planning: What Is Left?:

“But the same lack of knowledge on the part of any single person or organization which makes it impossible for comprehensive planning to replace the market also makes it irrational for a non-comprehensive planning agency to try merely to “guide” the market. If the guiding agency is less knowledgeable than the system it is trying to guide – and even worse, if its actions necessarily result in further undesired consequences in the working of that system – then what is going on is not planning at all but, rather, blind interference by some agents with the plans of others.”

When I read that I think about the application of immature technology to a complex problem which is the same as imposing a huge tariff or tax which has the effect of lowering the value of output and by definition the value of labor.

Those are moral values liberals want for everyone but themselves. If their opponents are caught cheating, they want to throw the book at them. If their side is caught cheating, they ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen. Liberals will cheer even louder for their team after finding out they cheated to win. The win is what’s important to them.

For example, consider what happened when the recordings of Jonathan Gruber surfaced that showed that he and Obama deliberately lied to Congress and the “stupid” American public to get Obamacare passed. Liberals were not angry at Obama for the lies and deception. They were angry at Gruber for letting the cat out of the bag. They also don’t care if illegal aliens vote, as long as they vote for Democrats. They would have been thrilled if illegal voting had put Hillary over the top. They also don’t care if climate scientists lie and cheat in their research or data collection as long as it promotes the “cause.”

Joel is on to something. I’ve just returned from a trip to the Balkans (Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania). The huge take away is that people everywhere need to identify with some kind of group. In those countries, they are ethnic (from the three Slavic tribes, gypsies, Romans, etc.), religious (Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Muslim), and political (democracy, communism, theocracy, dictatorships).

In modern times, the political group identity has prevailed. However, when, for example, Croatia decided to secede from Yugoslavia after the death of Tito, the Serbs decide it is important to invade Croatia to “protect” their Serb brothers who have lived there as a peaceful minority for a thousand years. In Bosnia, it was about enforcing the Yugoslav political identity against the religious identity of the Muslims, who had also been around for a very long time. (Belgrade Serbia has been destroyed in wars 44 times in the last thousand years and lived under 60 different rulers, including the Ottoman Turks).

So, from the rock crusher of the Balkans, to the “melting pot” of the United States, we can see the same themes playing out. Religious and ethnic identity groups have largely been swept under the rug of liberal technocratic democracy, which has provided a rising standard of living for pretty much everyone – or at least the elites. The platforms of both the Republican and Democratic parties now consist of technocratic gobbledegook incomprehensible to voters, the majority of whom can’t identify the branches of government or who fought the Civil War. White nationalists are forming their own ethnic identity groups. Others relate to religious groups. All are losing faith with the established order of liberal technocratic politics. Even the minorities who traditionally supported the liberal cause have abandoned it.

Into the polite water balloon fight of American politics came The Trump, on his golden steed, orange hair flying in the wind, an exotic woman behind him from a country nobody can name, armed with a verbal sniper rifle and no rules of engagement. Claiming to have never read a book in his life, he captures the political identity group of voters and repudiates the entire political establishment, the “relative morals” orthodoxy of political correctness and in particular, the Climate Change religion and replacing them with his own idiosyncratic brand of absolute moralism. No wonder he won.

The whole of what Joel calls the “Progressive agenda” and moral relativism is now open to question, examination and repudiation where appropriate. And not just the United States – The liberal European elites are scared out of their wits that Trumpism will spread to their voters. Check out Marine LaPen in France for example.

There is a problem with this study. it is discussing the moral viewpoints of Liberals and Conservatives and how they influence each groups’ position in regards to the Claim that Man Made Change Change exists and it is a danger.
Morality does not pay into it. What it boils down to is the factual reality of the situation. Before these people at CORNELL UNIVERSITY can begin to quantify any moral presents influencing the CAGW theory , they have to first learn and understand arguments and evidence that the people who do not subscribe to the theory, base their position on.
This education must come from those who find CAGW incorrect and unscientific. They should not get these facts from a third party or a proponent of CAGW.
Only after they understand how many scientists in a multitude of fields have reached the conclusion that the CAGW theory is wrong or over stated can they begin to address the activities each side does or does not take, as well as finally, the moral aspects of the issue.

But then it was never meant to be a honest evaluation but merely another exercise in psycho-babble.
Of course on a positive side they put on full display their dishonesty and lack of an moral compass for all to see.

Compassion and fairness make perfect sense, because climate change is an environmental justice issue, and being willing to do something about climate change also requires that we care about future generations.” These just are words strung together. Climate change is change in climate or climates. Justice is nothing to do with glacial periods. Maybe we can all complain about the ice ages which began so long ago and unjustly changed the lives of plants and animals. Can we stop it happening again when the current interglacial ends? It will be so unfair!

I do not see the eye rolling here. If one accepts the assumption that climate change is dangerous and that humans are causing it, then everything that follows does indeed flow from compassion and fairness.

Of course, I am not convinced that climate change is even mostly human caused or is dangerous and to assert a wide range of political agendas based on that does not seem compassionate or fair since in any case you take from a producer and give to a consumer with no obvious trade.

It would be interesting and may be part of the research to decide which comes first: Is compassion and fairness a trait that creates vulnerability or susceptibility to memes of climate change catastrophe? Or does a person first accept climate change catastrophe? Well that makes no sense that some people accept it and seem by amazing coincidence to also be compassionate and fair; so it must be that being compassionate and fair breeds susceptibility to messages of doom.

My generation was affected by population growth too: we came into existence. Future generations will be affected the same way. The number of people in future generations who volunteer to reduce that effect in the obvious way is likely to be small, just as the number of people saying there are too many people now never volunteer to decrease the population by one.

I guess you are liberal if you have compassion and fairness toward future generations as they state, and present generations can go to hell (which they are blind to). Denying developing countries access to affordable energy is killing and will continue to kill people by the 10s of millions a year. The past few years, climate science papers have been more commonly written by sociology business, psychologists and professors of belly fluff dynamics. These people are less equipped than an observant 10 year old to assess climate change progress.

“Those insights from a group of four researchers at Cornell – Janis Dickinson, professor of natural resources; Poppy McLeod, professor of communication; Robert Bloomfield, professor of management and professor of accounting; and Shorna Allred, professor of natural resources”

Lets see who do we have here a pair of professors of natural resources.

” Janis Dickinson” quote of the day- from the web site
“I am not taking any more grad students and I have moved back to California – best of luck with your search! I strongly suggest that you seek out alternative mentors for the Cornell Lab’s postdoctoral positions and wish you the best of luck with your application.”

I give up, anything I was planning to say is toast after that. Buzz sputter pop..

“Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

With regards to the study, there is an assumed “settled science” position, that CAGW is scientific fact proven by empiric data as opposed to being a possibility as evidences in a virtual world of models, vaguely supported by basic bench science in physics. That position of CAGW being a foregone fact of science is as much an “echo” of a different echo chamber as the remarks on this site.

The only way for the “echo chamber” to go away is for the supporters of CAGW to stop pretending that their their hypothesis is proven fact, and come to the table and engage in real scientific discussion regarding the uncertainties and questions around about the so called “proof” that CAGW is real and killing us.

In order to understand why warmists are so intransigent about their position you need to go back in history to see how their position evolved.

When the Vostok ice cores first came out, there was a panic about the obvious correlation between CO2 and temperature. People like Hansen jumped to the wrong conclusion and then piled on with a bunch of bogus theory like positive feedback that presumed to support the connection they needed. Meanwhile, it was discovered that CO2 was a lagging indicator of temperature, but this was incorrectly rejected when it was considered that positive feedback was enough to explain the apparent correlation and even to this day, most warmists refuse to acknowledge the actual direction of causality shown in the ice cores.

Now, they needed a benchmark to hang their hat on and the only criteria was that the effect had to be large enough to justify international action since at the time, the a US administration wasn’t going to do squat as they considered people like Hansen nut jobs for making unsubstantiated claims about CO2 leading to a global climate catastrophe. This is where the magical 3C increase from doubling CO2 came from. This was large enough to scare more than just a few misled climate scientists, seemed to be consistent with ice cores when CO2 is presumed to cause all change and served as justification for the IPCC.

When Clinton came to power, Hansen and his ilk found a gullible politician to promote their position, who of course was Al Gore. This was the connection that resulted in GISS and NOAA becoming redirected to presume CAGW, rather than to try and determine whether or not CAGW was even possible. They had their 3C number canonized by an international body and that was all they needed. No further proof was necessary and the gravy train started to run.

Today, we know far better and that the actual effect is closer to 1C and most likely less, which completely eliminates any urgency for action and in fact disputes the need to an organization like the IPCC. To those who have entire careers invested in this presumption, the idea that they have been so wrong for decades is unfathomable and the natural response to truth that undermines beliefs is denial. While the truth has a multi trillion positive impact to the worlds economies, it also has a multi-billion dollar negative impact on those who jumped on the gravy train. Money talks and that’s what this is all about.

The lead sentence of the article describes compassion and fairness as “two values highly rated by liberals”. Four paragraphs later, the article states that conservatives rate those two values “nearly as highly”, but that conservatives rate the other three values “substantially higher”. In other words, the difference between the two groups in these values isn’t in what liberals value highly, but in the values that conservatives rate substantially higher. And according to the article, one of those values (purity) correlates with willingness to make sacrifices.

If true that would be interesting, if not useful. If you were ill-informed enough to believe that CO2 was an unmixed evil with large negative externalities, certainly valuing fairness, compassion, and purity would lead you to support its reduction. But I find it difficult to believe that instead of fairness, compassion, and purity, significant number of people value harming, cheating, and degradation — so I wonder very much how this group managed to differentiate people on the fairness, compassion, and purity axes in the first place in order to detect a correlation. I also wonder what “personal choices” were on offer to “mitigate” climate change’s impact, and how strong the correlation they found. It seems difficulty to believe that conservatives and liberals value compassion and purity nearly the same — yet proponents of mitigation and adaption do not. The devil is in the details, and in this article the details are completely missing.

The first quote from Dickinson about climate change being an “environmental justice issue” are revealed about her mindset. But she doesn’t mention liberals specifically in that quote, and the author’s summary of her view leading up to that quote is nonsensical when conservatives rate compassion and fairness nearly as highly. I wonder if it is Dickinson making the association or the unnamed author of the press release. The quote from McLeod strikes me as quite reasonable: “Our finding that willingness to take action on climate change was related to moral values embraced by both liberals and conservatives suggests that it is too simplistic to use political ideology alone to predict support for climate change action.”

The authors came closest to the real issue here: “The Cornell researchers also found that belief in climate change was significantly associated with increased willingness to act.” This is no surprise, but I’ll go further with something they probably didn’t ask about. Increased willingness to act is nearly perfectly associated with the belief that climate change causes *significant harm* and can be *avoided by mitigation*. This is a tough sell, given that the world’s temperature has increased by about 1C since the 19th century with no apparent net harm whatsoever, and that adaptation to that rise was vastly cheaper than attempting to mitigate it would have been, even if you imagine mitigation would have worked.

“Haidt identifies five “moral axes” around which humans develop individual moral reasoning: compassion/harming, fairness/cheating, in-group loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion and purity/degradation.”
Haidt’s axes look to me like pop psychology at it’s worst – as arbitrary as Eric Berne’s transactional analysis, as bogus as scientology, and as useless as Eysenck’s model of personality.
The key terms in Haidt’s theory (the poles of his axes) are ill-defined, impossible to quantify, and/or dependent on the point of view of the individual, often requiring post-facto judgments.

“As we learn what’s important to different kinds of people with respect to climate change, that information can help us communicate in ways where the problem can be heard,” said Dickinson. “And I think we may be missing arguments that are important to people if we ignore moral diversity.”

*

What’s really being said is that they need a broader brush to capture the hearts and minds of those currently unwilling to fall in line and believe the meme. They are looking to expand their reach and mastery over all sinners.

It’s all about communication. Again. Never about facts and science. Nope. Communication is the key, AKA hoodwinking, conning, etc. They want to hit people where their emotions lie and grab them by their morals. Simple. That’s manipulation, folks.

There is no clearer indication of this than Schmidt rising to director at GISS. During Hansen’s tenure, Schmidt was his right hand man and chief propagandist running the Real Climate web site. That Schmidt rose to the top tells me in no uncertain terms that messaging far more important to the alarmists than the science behind the message.

It is one thing to say you believe in compassion and fairness, and it is another thing to actually do something. Liberals may talk about compassion and fairness, but conservatives actually contribute more money to charity.

Another nasty observation along these lines …. I find that Liberals are in love with the ideas of compassion and fairness … but only as far as it is window dressing for their flawed characters. It’s all tied up in Noble Cause Corruption. They will embrace a noble cause, like opposition to the raped women of the congo … but at the same time will hold up a sign at an anti-trump rally saying rape Melania. I have a sociopathic, liberal sister in law, who jumps on every “compassion” bandwagon put forth by the libs ….. but wouldn’t go see her dying mother, or let her kids visit either of their grandparents. ….. now that’s some real compassion for ya!!

As long as it is not “real compassion”, … but rather the idea of it, they are all on board.